Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Ever notice that something breaks, fails, or falls apart almost always between 5 p.m. on Friday and 8 a.m. on Monday?
My granddaughter Jayne and I were sharing a plate of calamari at the kids’ house in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, last Sunday. It’s something Jayne and I share often. She discovered “fried squid” (calamari) one day when we all ate at an Olive Garden.
We’re both big fans.
This time, it was from a frozen bag purchased at Trader Joe’s in downtown Pittsburgh. If you’re not familiar with Trader Joe’s, it’s similar to Whole Foods but devoid of the preppy attitude and inflated prices.
We tossed a bag in the air fryer and a few minutes later were watching one of the girls’ endless episodes of Full House on YouTube while we worked our way through the squid. Jayne and Norah love Full House, so did their mom 30 years ago. Yep, I’m on my second time through the series. I’m still trying to become a fan. It is a challenge.
After a couple of pieces of calamari, I noticed one especially chunky section. It was a lot harder than any of the other pieces.
I fished it out of my mouth, and it wasn’t any form of swimming ocean creature; it was a chunk of dental filling.
I did a tongue sweep and discovered a ragged hole on my lower left molar. It’s the second molar in after your wisdom tooth. I didn’t have a wisdom tooth (no jokes please), so it was the primary molar.
Thankfully, it didn’t hurt.
In a city like Pittsburgh, where there are 24-hour services for everything from prenatal to veterinary care, I thought I might be able to see a dentist that Sunday afternoon. No such luck.
I was able to get an appointment on Monday afternoon at Aspen Dental, but upon follow-up, all they would do was x-rays and an initial exam, no treatment.
Not much help there since we were flying home early Tuesday morning.
At 10 a.m. Eastern time, I called Dr. Tyler Graham’s office in Riverton.
Mindi answered the phone promptly. I explained the situation, and she laughed.
“Well, that’s a predicament, isn’t it?” she said.
When she asked me which tooth, I described the location, and she said, “Dr. Graham has it highlighted as a problem tooth that will eventually need a crown.”
That eventuality was now.
We were scheduled to arrive in Riverton on the afternoon United Express flight at around 1:40. She scheduled me for a 2:30 appointment.
We arrived on time. Had enough time to unload suitcases, and then I was off to Dr. Graham’s office on West Main in Riverton.
I coached Tyler (Dr. Graham) in 8th-grade football and track almost two decades ago. He’s a good friend of my son Brian and also an excellent dentist.
Tyler put in a bridge a couple of years ago that is working well.
The filling in question was an old one, one with a history dating back to my sophomore year at the University of Wyoming.
I had a bad toothache one day and called home to see what I could do. Mom called Dr. Larry D. Foianini, arranged payment over the phone with a credit card, and I dropped by his office on a Tuesday afternoon.
Dr. Foianini was a young dentist, still in his 20s. He went to work, set in a couple of pins to reinforce the tooth, and built a metal filling around it. It held for half a century. Dr. Foianini is still in practice in the Windy City today, at 77.
The world has changed a bit since 1976. The world of dentistry is light-years ahead of what it was at that time.
During an earlier checkup this year, Tyler told me about a new device at his office that can carve a crown in just a couple of hours. He gave me a demonstration and we talked about the similarity of this machine to my CNC carver that I use to create 3D carvings in wood.
If you’ve had a traditional crown, you know the traditional process. The dentist carves out the tooth to prepare a base for the crown. A sticky mass of calk is pressed into the problem tooth, and you bite down and hold the gooey mess until it hardens. They pulled the impression out and sent it away to make a crown. Meanwhile, a temporary crown is placed over the prepped tooth. You bit down, and the soft metal matches the contour of your opposing teeth. Wait a few weeks for the crown to return, have the temporary removed, and the new one placed. Inevitably, the dentist has to carve the crown to match, sometimes carving for quite a bit.
That process changed last week.
I checked in at 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon.
Tyler took a cursory look and verified that a crown was in order.
His assistant Halle took a couple of images. Tyler numbed the area and carved away the old tooth and filling. Then he scanned the tooth and the teeth above with a high-resolution optical scanner.
The 3D imagery was impressive. He took his time to get images from every angle, then sent them to his Glidewell Fast IO CAD/CAM milling unit.
The name is bigger than the device. Using imagery from the scanner, it carved a zirconia blank into a perfect crown.
Tyler took the image and manipulated it a bit, removing layers a fraction of a millimeter at a time and adding a bit more in other spots.
At 33, he’s a seasoned pro with this digital device.
For those who complain about Gen X and their reliance on technology, I suggest you drop in to Graham Family Dental the next time you have a tooth issue that requires a crown, and you’ll quickly discover what technology has brought to the dental world.
After manipulating the image for a few minutes, he locked in the blank and told me to come back to the office in about half an hour.
I checked a couple of hay fields to see if they were ready to cut, and was back at the office by 4:05 p.m.
The crown was ready.
Tyler and Halle did a little prep work on my gums so the crown would seal, and added a few chemical agents, then applied the glue to the crown. It fit perfectly on the first try.
With other crowns, I’ve had the dentist drill the crown after the “tap tap…grind grind” on a piece of marking paper. This time, there was only one tapping session, and the crown was finished.
It’s been five days now, and I can’t tell it from my other teeth.
From start to finish, I had an exam and a new crown installed in an hour and 40 minutes.
Little towns are maligned by the media as backward and incapable of competing with the “big city” in nearly every aspect of our lives.
I called Staci to tell her about how fast and how perfectly Tyler had scanned, prepped, carved, and installed the crown. She is a PhD Nurse working with the University of Pittsburgh and a former floor nurse with the vaunted UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, one of the premier medical groups in the world).
She was a bit stunned.
“You couldn’t do that here, Dad,” she said.
It’s a testament to what is available right here in Fremont County.
We don’t get the headlines; our services are often maligned, but an expert, who is an artist as well, will have a following no matter where they practice.
In a city of more than 300,000 people, nobody could fix my tooth. In a town of 10,000, a former eighth-grade football player scanned, carved, and installed a permanent crown before supper. That’s not backward. That’s Wyoming.